One Hundred Years of the Marx Brothers

There was always something "other," something "outsider" about the Marx Brothers—they seemed to belong to an entirely different universe, not only from the other actors in their movies, but from each other. The members of many comedy teams, like Olsen and Johnson or the Ritz Brothers, were so similar you often couldn't tell them apart. Others may have had physical contrasts—Laurel and Hardy, say, or Abbott and Costello—but those still seemed to be two halves of a whole. The Marxes, on the other hand, could have been members of three separate teams: one visual, one verbal and the other ethnic and musical. But what ultimately united Harpo, Groucho and Chico was a shared sense of subversive surrealism—each was, in his own way, anarchically absurdist. They were perfect as individuals and perfect as an ensemble.

This point is underscored in "The Marx Brothers TV Collection," a new DVD set being released Tuesday to commemorate the centennial of the Marx Brothers, who first began working together as a vaudeville act under their now-iconic stage names in May 1914.

The Marx Brothers all lived to ripe old ages, yet their canon is a tiny one, a mere 13 feature films produced during a 20-year period. The addition of roughly 10 hours of mostly prime material by the Marxes is thus cause for celebration. It's of no consequence that virtually none of these clips, from variety shows, game shows, talk shows, dramas and commercials, feature the Marx Brothers together. (Some of the most bizarrely entertaining moments, in fact, come as "words from our sponsor.")

It is commonly thought that the Brothers were at their peak in the 1920s on Broadway and the 1930s in Hollywood, lost momentum during the 1940s and were largely forgotten by the 1950s (apart from Groucho's highly successful quiz show, "You Bet Your Life") before being rediscovered in the 1960s by radicals and college students who appreciated their antiestablishment stance. This new set proves that the Marxes enjoyed a true renaissance in the early years of television and that, in many ways, it was an even more appropriate medium for their semi-improvised antics than the comparatively controlled world of cinema.

Harpo, whose speechless persona prevented him from exploring the same kinds of vocal media in which Groucho triumphed, comes off especially well on TV. He didn't have to sustain character episode after episode; his explosive style was tailor-made for quick sketches in variety shows. He shines in a six-minute 1952 restaurant sketch that's a hysterical example of video vaudeville at its finest, as hilarious as anything ever done on TV, in which he plays a wacky waiter uproariously sticking it to the snobby and pretentious types who frequent fancy eateries. He's more thoughtful—even tender—on an oddball 1961 show called "The Wonderful World of Toys" in which, by interacting with a sequence of actual children's toys, he imbues them with anthropomorphic properties—think "Toy Story" before computer graphics.

The Marxes worked well in such solos, but the constant variety of the variety-show format had the three artists continually working in ad hoc teams; Harpo and Chico are a wonderful duo, as in a 1952 four-handed piano comedy fantasia (on Latin American themes, oddly enough) in which Chico's explanation of the routine is as amusing as the bit itself. The two also do several bits with the underappreciated crooner Tony Martin, who proves himself to be among the best straight men the comedians ever worked with (so, for that matter, is Perry Como on a 1956 show with Groucho). Some of the spontaneously assembled teams seem like names pulled randomly out of a hat, like the combination of Milton Berle, Rosalind Russell, Dinah Shore and Harpo, which achieves an odd chemistry on the 1952 "All Star Revue."

Groucho is a marvelous duet partner, as on a charming 1959 encounter with Shore. But the highlight of this new package may be Groucho's 1967 duet with Jackie Gleason; an already large man made bigger by a cape and top hat, smoking a tiny cigarette, standing next to a small, slight man armed with an enormous cigar that he wields like a dangerous weapon. Like so much 1960s TV, it starts by evoking the ancient theatrical past in warmly nostalgic hues: They sing a variation of "Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean," the vaudeville theme song of the Marx Brothers' uncle Al Shean—but it quickly elevates into something deeper, a wickedly transgressive display of comic one-upmanship, with two master improvisors at their pinnacle.

As a kind of coda, Groucho then sings one of his signature solos, "Show Me a Rose," which quickly goes in the opposite direction. Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby's lyric is a random jumble of cliché images and phrases from other songs and poems, but the haunting melody and Groucho's affectionate, grandfatherly delivery soon transform the absurd into the sentimental and imbues it with a sweetness not unlike Harpo's endearing childishness. That ability to hit you on several levels at once was one more thing that made the Marx Brothers unique.

Comedy seems to be so necessary in our daily lives, yet most of whom I consider the truly greatest comedians or comedy teams are long since gone: The Marx Bros., Laurel & Hardy, W.C. Fields, Abbott & Costello, The 3 Stooges, The Little Rascals, Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Burns & Allen, The Honeymooners.

Bill Cosby also fits this pantheon -- as did Robin Williams (probably the greatest of our current crop -- RIP, Robin) and a few others.

These folks gave us a different type of comedy than is currently available: it was often possessed of a child-like innocence, a type of zaniness and near-insanity, without the foul language or the vulgarity popular today (double entendres aside). It seemed to never be mean-spirited or hostile, even though it was often slap-stick. It was all 'them' -- no special effects -- and the gags were really sophisticated given the medium.

These people made us laugh -- that was their great gift to us -- and I, for one, am so very thankful.

I'm embarrassed to say I went most of my life believing that the Marx Bros were Italian. I'm also embarrassed to say that when asked to name a role model by either a boss or college professor the first name that came to mind was Graucho Marx. Finally, I've developed my own screen for dementia though it's never been validated. I ask elderly adults if they remember the Marx Bros. If the say yes, then I ask them to name each member of the act.

You-all forgot the straight-man of the team, Zeppo! He was the foil for quite a bit of the mayhem & insanity, playing the regular guy trying to be normal as the other three turned the world upside down.

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